the steady rhythm

There is a steady rhythm in the pulse of the universe.
This I believe 
At the same time I believe

The necessary erratic erranty of the cosmos.
The Great Barrier Reef is dead
And the thousands of salmon continue living

Their lives all about the long return.
So ours, also, must be.

From where to where, from whom to whom, the definitions
May not be necessary.
What is it that we truly long for?

That which is repeated over and over lying between
All the lines and names and breaths
Including the time we stare at the seemingly 

Boundless sea.
Have we moved enough yet? 

Farther or closer who is to know.

young man

The list for the grocery would be short.
But walking through the aisles, 
By itself, The List would grow, long and
With wings, maybe, as in poultry.
And promising as in spices, sweet like
Dates in a section closer to wines.
It would be important to impress the girl, 
Nope, not soda or beer or pizza.
Not in that old way of wooing 
That she would be a queen, 
In the kitchen.
The young man would show off he could
Make fire and keep a pot warm,
Apologize as well he's no cook, but
She should stay put on the high chair
And enjoy his attempt to show grandly
What he has trouble saying plain.
And the pretext for her coming over?
Anything but a movie on a small screen,
Anything that would lead to the couch,
Anything that would lead to anywhere else
Except the kitchen.
And seeing him trying not to be a klutz
In an apron with a wooden ladle, she
Would most likely offer to cut the onions.
Between the two of them, someone would 
Banter and another would quip,
And laughter a chorus that would fill.
The fried chicken wings, burnt.
The butternut soup, no salt.
Only the multigrain bread absolved.
He: "We got the dates, though."
She: "And this is some wine."

The snowflakes that wait by the road

Dear Friend,

Are the leaves falling where you are? The view of the mountains where I am are beautiful in a quiet and almost sad way whenever it is autumn. Mountains in autumn remind me of both hope and bruise, and that space in between them without a name. Also of Native Americans and the colored people, black, brown, yellow. The weight of history is heavy and long, and though we may want to refuse it, the times remember for us. The length of its memory, the memory of an elephant. Have you ever placed your open palm on a grown elephant? Gentler than the dog's, the dog who loves you and sleeps by your side as though there is nothing else in the world to ask for.

The tree right across my window is black and bare. It is sleeping now that winter has begun. Since my arrival, I have noticed two stray cats called by their names at night by a woman's voice. The cats are not hers. I have seen her on an occasion feeding them in a corner. Sometimes the cats are by porch steps when I arrive; they look at me and I try to put a name to what I feel. I am wary. Though I can count by years the length of stay, moving is always inevitable and necessary. Someone, many years ago, engaged against it: she said there are things that cannot be changed. I let her have her way, though I did not agree and still don't; although admitting, I must say a part of me wants to believe it.

I think about the birds, and the squirrels, and the stray animals at times these days, their lives no more lesser or greater than the lives of those in the Third and war-torn worlds, in conditions where gentleness remains to exist.

On the last days of this semester, students tell of long and heavy histories of themselves; art, again, as always, a catharsis, although...you must have sensed by now I remain grappling: to old to believe and un-believe. Hope. Is Always An Expensive Thing. We buy in exchange of spirit.

There is plenty of sadness and pessimism to share. And yet there remains joy in things so little, like the snowflakes who lives ever so momentarily only to fall and wait by the wayside, to lose itself and rise again.


Signed, P

what the mind says

what the minds says/ is altogether different.

i take walks in the morning, walks

in the late afternoon towards evening, evening late

the lights becoming/ is altogether different.

i have to keep remembering now, nearly

all the time what made the decision to keep on 

this way beyond distances and times of day, past

the roads seen ahead/ what the mind says

is altogether different.

The Act of Remembering

A dangerous thing, this act.
Betrayal to one's own mind who
once decided and precariously
ordered the will to 
severe part of itself, 
preserving most 
of what spirit remains.

And then suddenly this-- 
re-collecting, bringing back
to make as part again
what had been 
intentionally let fall away.

When still young, there was 
so much strength to push
ahead, against the gusts.
To keep forward the head
steady from not looking back.

Perhaps because the road
was still long, the young
eyes still unable to sense
what lies by the by, 
by the bend.

Our immortal's time.

Now here we are. Here I am.
The familiar autumn 
on my back. I try, I try
to push against the gusts.
To keep away from the act,
from surrendering to
remembering. I do not want

to say I am afraid that come
this winter, the bones will,
on their own, remember.











  

Love

On better days it is easy to remember
as though never forget
                       love
a clear thing
like the awareness of a lovely day
like this
without that cat across the street
                       black and passing

a matter of time

And does he tell you he will return?
In what words, scattered like rain or
Clumped together like flowers in bouquet,
Predictable as the swinging of a boy
Just small enough for the set, too old
The year after this next. In what words

Does he tell you he will return?

I move through water filled with pansies
And daylight that spills into the night,
People without colour in a language
Familiar yet strange; how do I tell her

I will return?

She waves her hand, says name no month.
There is a garden beside her, constant 
Sunshine above, occasional rains, 
Eternal stars. The dogs lay close to her.
I dream.
Watching the night here remain light.

(thursday night) a long goodbye 5

For whom is the goodbye? I ask myself now
Finally understanding why they all ask

My consistent refusal for despedida
No send-offs, I said, No one is leaving.

Even so I think of returns.
Knowing all these are leaving me

As I leave them. 
I do not want to sleep, wanting only

To keep awake. Lengthen, possibly, time.
This Thursday night longer and longer still.

There is a date waiting for me. A door.
An airplane. 

From across

There she is again, the woman with a basketful of mabolo. 
Velvet fruit that must be animal,kitten furry on my hand
Yesterday it looked at me with eyes that meow, meow, meow
Is what the kitten said meow, meow, meow. The woman said

Be careful. Kitten is small and so is the velvet apple
Like puppy head pat, pat, pat. Love, love, love woman said.
She is waving at me now from the other side. I see her
Smile waving her hand. She crosses the water, knee deep

Waist deep, too deep, she says I love you I love you 
I love you and we are on a paper boat
She paddles and says Look! Look at the fish! And I swim
And my skin laughs because it is water, not

So loud, I laugh and laugh and flap about but I don't.
The woman said very good you can do it. I find my hands
Into a circle tracing dots into a heart, Who am I?
The woman asks. She is crossing the waters and there is 

Ripple behind her, there are sounds, there is a car
Brooom, brooom, brooom it is loud and the triangle
On paper is sharp I try to cover it blue, blue, blue
Because it is noisy and loud and sharp and bright

I squint my eyes and see the line and clench my teeth,
Hold the pen, fingers like this, catch a fish, want 
The wide and flail my arms but I don't. The woman said
Very good you can do it I love you I love you I love you.

There she is again, the woman with a basketful of mabolo.
Across the water across the table there are sounds
Something moves at the corners of my eyes, it is breeze.
There are suns on my paper and we are on a boat.

Who am I? she says. She opens her hand and there it is
A mabolo, velvet kitten puppy fish circle dots heart. 





for An

where stars are

Soon, he knows, he will start writing about stars
the sky being a single dome under where they all are.
Not very original, in the same way at one time
someone wrote it is the same sea where they were
wading their feet together merely few hundred miles apart.
He doubts writing about stars would help.
He doubts poetry helps.
Suspicious of words now, finding them out
self-entitled ants proclaiming able to make anything 
better: soul, world, future. Who listens to them, poets?
The heart has finer than fine a multitude of strings

Does poetry even matter against the literal onslaughts
to the body? Real bills, real houselessness, real hunger.
He doubts poetry;
doubts himself, a fool.
But the stars were, are, will still be there. Themselves
mocking the ephemeral fears of his temporal body.

Dear friend with a spindle,

How do you do? I woke up sweating in an hour-less dark 
from last night's sleep from a dream I cannot tell about.
Better to say it was a dream of elephants, pink flamingoes
than others; it was humid in spite of the opened windows

Outlines of plane trees visible in the bright but waning
moon; the few days ago spent at a cove aptly named 
"Hidden" (in English, of course) by well-meaning locals. 
My tan darker now. My weeks here more less than more,

No matter I try not to count. Still, a few days before 
I had finally sent the latest collection of poems 
delayed at least half a year because-- 
A translation work and the editing of an anthology sat 

Beside me nights at the cove where I listened to the sound
of tide coming in and daybreak arriving; and watched locals
searching for seaweed and clams and other shells to eat.
A thirty-one year old woman with seven children 

Gave me a local story (the usual, all hearsay and no ending)
with an oil massage. I had slept in dreamless peace. 
The next day she sold fish from her neighbour's catch
and unripe mangoes from her neighbour's yard. 

It has been awhile since I've had a woman; this is such 
a sexist thing to say and I do not say it to anyone.
Like a sin meant for confession. To which I account
the restlessness. Do women also feel the same way? 

There was a poetry book launch and a literary gathering,
all fairly recently; another one tomorrow by a writer
in a local tongue I have come to love in spite of things--
such as not fully understanding it. The book am reading now

Is Atwood, a collection of her stories on inner lives (or 
tumult?) of women and their placid surfaces; their words
ballet dancers on tiptoes onstage. I find no words 
right enough for women. Again, must be a thing to say.

I am tired and my defences from my own self are down.
(You must be reading between the lines now.) 
I still continue to walk the dogs days and nights, though
I have ceased to run. One might say that in a way, 

I am sad (although it is hard to certainly say). Determine 
a more apt word when a month is now named on the calendar.
There is a net in my mind for catching sadness 
before it arrives, no matter it is visible from the shore.

My eldest dog has become more affectionate and I wonder
if it knows the leaving that is coming soon. Perhaps, 
this is only projection, as nearly everything else perceived.
At night, I memorise the humidity and the outlines made

By shadows and warmth. Her beautiful brown skin too,
the scent of it without perfume. I sense, as in any story,
there will be love making soon in the same wild abandon 
we used to do but--

the child

so we are patient with god
who has own time
mysterious

something neither one can
measure by logic
affection

longer than mortal patience
length of time
by breaths

or by turn of tides seasons 
revolutions of peoples
planets...

some parts of this country
god is a child
who laughs

is good is teasing is letting
us run afraid of our own
limitations

the flock, the flock

I no longer say "Bless me, Father
For I have sinned." I have left
A long time ago. Not anymore
The same child who read the bible
Every afternoon, cover to cover
For the stories of unbelievable
Faith for a beyond admirable man

Or god; in my life there 
Are stories in middle of stories
The ones I do not dare have light
Or air on them--for what use?
They are the silence between
My god and me. 

I have keep my peace with 
Men and women claiming closeness
To god whom they seem to know
Up close: we are entitled to
Our own brand of delusions. But
I do not say this, let them be.
My own is that god and I 

Are this: cosmos letting me be;
My own weakness leading me--
From time to time--to becoming
That same child again who
Has nothing but faith and fear

And faith: all to be good again.

from a burning room

I am slow to anger, except in particular times
There is no water. Nothing except dry heat
For instance this, in forsaken countries
(for there really are such forsaken places).

It was not always like this, the slowness 
The calm with which I attempt to take in stride
The many kinds of failure: processes and people.
There had been much audacity when I was younger:

Edition of myself that had not yet known better 
Someone I can now only admire on those still 
Burning in fire, those still absolutely certain 
On certainty. Leading the walk ahead convinced 

Nothing cannot be surpassed, no matter literal. 
Such admirable conviction! Such admirable anger!

Perhaps anger can be exhausted, though not all
Not all. There is still anger in reserves 
The kind that is slow to come, vengeful 
Poisonous and antipathetic, something that does

Not easily yield to forgiving or forgetting--
It is terrible! As all things are when passions
Come alive. Who is afraid? Who else is afraid?

To whom are we writing for

Possibly the sense is the same: all of these--
Us writing on a wall: millennials and those 
Past who scribbled their names on slates 
If only to say "I was here". Or "Joni was here".
Some form of validation knowing our own passing.
Finite, are we not
Deliberate to leave a trace of ourselves here?
Evidence of existence; fossil of memories...

(I have only sung alone in public once:
holding a guitar borrowed from Music Majors;
in the middle of a kiosk, love then had audacity
to call everyone's attention as introduction:
"Hi everyone, listen"--did I say it that way
I can no longer remember--"I have a song for..."
The girl blushed but remained on her seat--
I think now, it was probably out of confusion
or public embarrassment--to endure

Such shameless proclamation. THEN a string 
Strummed SNAPPED.) Who can remember that 
On their own? Recall names, retell the story,
Laugh at appropriate moments in the telling?
It has been years before this: This
Writing on the wall about it.

how would you want to be born

If you were to decide, would you want to be born
into exactly the same way you are now?
There is a correct answer and there is 
a truthful one. The correct answer is

always a Yes for all believed-to-be moral
reasons including resignation to fate.
The more truthful one, far from it. Why
would you choose again exactly the same

circumstance that led you beating your own breast
calling out to a universe that does not answer
why all these senseless pain (war-torn refugees,
hunger, true hunger and true abandonment) while

others worry more wind to sail their yacht?
The young people at the university yesterday
organised themselves and came to the streets 
raised their fists in claims of revolution.

Some of them took their poetry and slammed,
invited me to come and speak (with them).
I could not place a word to what I feel.
Perhaps I have grown too old:

I still want to believe, but

on devotion

M has two children, two sons, both of them
with autism. Because they live in an island 
at least thrice removed from the capital
and once deluged (it took a night 

in a ferry for her to attend
a poetry reading where we first met)
there were no centres for the boys. 
She and her husband must have schooled 

themselves on love
and forgiving the universe, and devotion.
Also pride 
for their sons.

Then the two of them built a small school
in the island where afternoons the boys
play at the shore and wade waters.
M takes photos of them and tells proudly
of little, but large, accomplishments.

Like pointing a fruit the boy wants to eat.

She writes poems about the largeness of love.
Serenity
and gratitude.
I cannot admire her enough for bravery.

These days she and the husband trains
CrossFit in anticipation of what is known
but unsaid. The boys are becoming teens. 

Not to go gentle into the night

It cannot be trust, if it is not trust
Isn't it?
Not love, if not love

Things that can only be absolute are
Too large
For lives with threaded seams

Do weeds in a landscaped yard know
Their fate, just the same
They soak up sun and rain

Of course we know sweetness cannot 
Be had for long
But what is life for, if not for it?

welfare of the world

Had I still been younger, I would have
still wanted to change the world.
Time has a way of showing a little
at a time, moment to moment 
letting me scale what can be done, 
what can't.

I write quiet poems now. Burning still,
I'd like to believe, in an almost imploding
kind of way; far from what I once had been:
immortal in being 

so much younger. wide eyed
out in the streets.

It has been years. 
And I have come to understand the way
the body, too, comes to understand:
how some stories are longer than we are.

Like violence.
Kindness.
Unconditional.

Some moments I wonder if a poem 
does make a difference in the world.
The kind that is enough to move a shadow.
Or are we deluding ourselves
believing we worth as much as a star.

It is possible
we don't. We are 
alive anyway.

Like every other little thing everyday:
leaf still on a twig, blade of grass,
weed, ant, housefly, guinea pig, 
farmed chicken, stray dog.

Who gets to say which life matters more.

Some stories, by their nature, are
truly longer than we are...
No one can really save the world and live 
to tell all the stories beginning to end.

early walk with dog

                                                for W


We still see the stars in the morning
because we get up before daybreak.
Sometimes we mistake it for night. 
My dog, what does he think
when he sits as I get our tie,
open the door and begin our walk 
no longer as long it used to be. 
We both are getting old.
He, more longanimous than I.

Metaphors of walking frighten me.
A long singular walk
at times with company
staying as long as they could.
In the end...

I realise this morning
how terribly frightened I am.
In spite of faith and knowledge
things have a way of turning
alright. Of course, 

the stars are there in the sky 
daybreak or night.